Pecan Sandies Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

So this is going to be the experimental cake. About a week ago I made pecan Sandies ice cream and had two sleeves of cookies left over. Somehow I had the willpower not to eat them! But now time is passing by and the cookies are still sitting on my shelf. Then I thought about my Graham Crackercake. I originally saw it on food 52 and had to make it myself to see if it would work. It did! Now it’s time to push the envelope. Could I do the same thing with pecan Sandies cookies? Is it possible to make a delicious pecan Sandies cake with cream cheese frosting? I needed to find out.

I took the two sleeves of cookies, ground them in the blender and basically swapped them for the graham cracker crumbs in the other cake recipe. Well, the cakes baked, but the definitely didn’t rise in the middle. I mean just take a look for yourself.

There a nice well happening in the center, but I knew it was still done, so I moved on to frosting the cake.

It was a bit comical because you could tell that there was a copious amount of frosting in the center of the cakes to fill the well. But I pushed on. I took my pics and cut a slice of the cake. It definitely was thinner in the middle, but the rest seemed to be ok. It was baked all the way through and had a nice hearty crumb like the graham cracker cake. Now to taste. Words can’t describe it. There was definitely a lot of butter happening from the butter I added and the butter from the cookie. But was it too sweet? Nope. Did the pecan flavor come through? Maybe? It was hard to tell, there was a subtle hint, but my brain wanted it to taste more like an almond cake. Also, I think adding a ¼ of finely ground toasted pecans would add to the depth of flavor. Cream cheese frosting was definitely the way to go.

So would I recommend this cake? Yes? I’m interested enough in this recipe that I would like to fine tune it and see it evolve. Mostly, I’d love for someone to take this recipe as is, try it out and report back. Do you dare? 🙂

Pecan Sandies Cake

½ cup all-purpose flour

1 ½ cups pecan sandies cookie crumbs ((from about 20 cookies))

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ cup unsalted butter (, softened)

¾ cup sugar

2 eggs (, room temperature)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup milk

your favorite cream cheese frosting

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease two 6-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cookie crumbs, and baking powder and set aside. In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating between each addition. Mix in the vanilla.

Add the flour mixture and the milk a little bit at a time, alternating between each. Mix thoroughly but be careful not to overbeat. Divide the batter evenly between your two prepared pans. Bake for about 25 minutes (or until golden brown and starting to pull away from the sides of the pans).

Cool in the pans for at least 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely before frosting and assembling.

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Comments

What if you used self rising flour to give it a bit more lift and mixed in a half cup or so of roasted pecans? Or cut the butter back a bit (though in my opinion, there is no such thing as TOO much butter)? This sounds pretty awesome – I’m going to have to try this one out!!

Those are great suggestions! I definitely think playing around with baking powder would help, and cutting back on butter too (gasp!). I LOVE butter, but this was definitely oily. Also, adding roasted pecans would help! Or, adding fewer cookies, added the roasted pecans and keeping everything else might work. I hope you try it!